Snowe: Obama fails at lawmaker outreach

Tina KorbePosted at 1:55 pm on March 27, 2012

It must be nice to be an outgoing senator. Suddenly, your opinion about everyone and everything is relevant! If you’re retiring because the atmosphere in the Senate has grown too bitter and partisan, you have a special credibility; you can comment on members of both parties.

At least, that seems to be true in Olympia Snowe’s case. Why else would it be news that she gives the president a failing grade at lawmaker outreach? She doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. The president keeps so much to himself that even members of his own party have complained about his lack of accessibility.

Still, it’s instructive to recall that the president has little interest in working with accountable, elected representatives. He has his boys’ club of inside advisers and his constitutionally questionable czars. Why work with Congress?

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) hasn’t met with President Obama in two years, she said in an interview on Tuesday.

“I think it was during the healthcare debate,” the centrist senator told ABC News. “There was a meeting on energy, a meeting in the spring of 2010.”

Asked to give Obama a grade on his outreach to legislators, she said it would be “close to failing.”

“A president should be reaching out to many on the opposite side of the aisle. You know, to many Republicans, on a bipartisan basis,” the three-term senator said.

The reporter also asked Snowe who the president does make an effort to contact. “Good question,” she quipped.

For more relevant Olympia Snowe post-resignation-announcement opining, don’t miss her praise of Scott Brown’s bipartisanship. It’s a bit odd to me that Brown is turning to Snowe for help with women voters, but, apparently, in Massachusetts, plenty of women care more for free contraception than religious liberty. Talk about sacrificing something precious for a cheap treat!